


Cruise Control

by MagitekUnit05953234



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Blood and Injury, Car Accidents, Cloning Blues, Dialogue Light, Dreams and Nightmares, Episode Prompto Spoilers, Gen, Gladio is there for like 2 lines, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Minor Character Death, Noct and Iggy are asleep, Not Really Character Death, Self-Esteem Issues, Whump, don't know what to call it, there's no actual danger of death or suicidal intent don't worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 11:55:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14852297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagitekUnit05953234/pseuds/MagitekUnit05953234
Summary: Prompto takes his hands off the wheel and waits.





	Cruise Control

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I have about 20 WIPs right now and none are even close to being ready to publish (and who knows if they ever will be) but I got the urge to write something really weird and dark so I just kinda slammed this down onto paper real quick. This is unrelated to anything else I’m writing, so this doesn’t affect the It’s Not a Literal Novel universe nor the Somehow Our Phones Still Have Service narrative.  
> I don’t have a beta so this is super unpolished. All mistakes are my own.

Prompto’s dreams have never been particularly logical. As a child he dreamed of dark spaces, of the taste of iron, of liquid in his lungs. As a preteen, he dreamed of his adoptive parent’s faces, until one day he couldn’t remember enough to summon the image. As a teen, he dreamed of revelations about himself being brought out kicking and screaming into the daylight, and of ending up just as alone as he always was in elementary school.

Prompto dreams of driving now. He only ever drove the Regalia once or twice, so he has very little reason for himself to be in the driver’s seat as opposed to Ignis, but he finds himself in front of the wheel anyway.

Prompto is alone in the car, and it feels devastatingly empty without Ignis’s careful scratching in his notepad or Noct napping in the back or Gladio shoving his book into the gap over the center console to show Prompto a particularly good part of the novel he’s engrossed in. 

The Cleignan countryside has never felt so sad. The cliffs and forests and lakes usually are good photo fodder if nothing else, but nothing draws the eye like it usually does. Prompto eventually settles for just keeping his eyes on the road. There doesn’t seem to be any other drivers out, but he has no desire to crash into the only other vehicle on the damn road if he can help it. He’s not messing up this car again, no way.

It’s almost calming, to just drive and drive with nothing but the wind and the sky and the car and the tarmac beneath him. Prompto feels almost peaceful… until suddenly he doesn’t. Something scrapes  _ hard _ against the side of the car, and Prompto whips his head around to see a Magitek Assassin being quickly left in the dust, with one arm bent the wrong way after having slashed through the outer paneling of the left side of the Regalia with its hand. Prompto curses and presses on the accelerator.

Now that he’s seen one MT, they seem to be everywhere. They emerge from the trees and from underground, clawing their way from the soil like plants filmed in time-lapse. None hold guns or swords or axes. They reach out, clawed gauntlets straining toward the Regalia as Prompto drives past. When the MTs begin to spill onto the road, stumbling with their hands desperately outstretched, Prompto does everything he can to avoiding hitting them. Eventually, he can’t and has to settle for flinching as armored bodies crunch under the front tires or are flung over the windshield to crash to the ground behind the car. 

Anxiety roils in Prompto’s stomach as he struggles to find gaps in the chittering, metallic crowd. The side of the road begins to look awfully tempting, but he’s sure to destroy the car entirely if he does that. The way it’s in now, it will already cost a hefty sum of gil to repair the poor thing. At least it’s still drivable.

A flash of yellow appears in the corner of Prompto’s vision, but he can’t risk taking his eyes off the road anymore without flipping the car or worse. It soon becomes apparent just what that yellow is and Prompto has never quite wanted to drive himself off a cliff so much in his life.

Among the rusting, sparking, soil-covered MTs —they only grow in levels of disrepair the longer Prompto drives— there’s  _ Prompto _ . Multitudes of Promptos are limping into the road and bursting through the asphalt, dripping blood and something darker from battered limbs and reddish eyes. They’re silent, but their mouths are open in soundless screams. Prompto can barely keep his hands on the wheel with how much they’re shaking, and he finally lets out a sob as the first fleshy body thuds against the nearly-obliterated front bumper.

Prompto turns on the windshield wipers as sickly black-red begins to spatter into his line of sight on the glass. In an absent sort of way, Prompto realizes that he’s coming up on the River Wennath. There’s a bridge there. What if he just…? His heart accelerates at the thought and he feels a spike of nausea, worse than the sort that’s been building up the longer this scene goes on. He can’t press the pedal and drive himself off. He just can’t.

How will this end? How can this end? Will it end if he goes over the edge, or will he lay in the river fully conscious, dragged down to the bottom by humanoid monsters encased in metal?

There’s a passive way out of this, Prompto realizes. He almost wants to laugh. Of course he can’t even take charge when its his own life on the line. He never could take any sort of responsibility without messing things up.

Prompto can see the river gleaming in the sun ahead. The bridge is there. It has a guard rail, but something tells Prompto that it won’t stop him much. He presses the accelerator to the floor and clicks on the cruise control. No stopping for anything.

The MTs and weird clones —Prompto doesn’t even want to think about what  _ those _ are all about and why they’re traversing among the Empire’s puppet soldiers— claw against the car as Prompto barrels toward the edge, jostling the vehicle but not diverting it from its path. Prompto steels his resolve and moves his feet away from the pedals.

The river comes up faster. The thuds and scrapes against the car become quicker. More soldiers are swept under the wheels. More clones are hitting the side of the car.

One more step. Prompto takes his hands off the wheel and waits.

As the car is flipped over the bridge railing, Prompto realizes that he didn’t put on a seatbelt. He also realizes that he never put the top of the car up. Prompto doesn’t even feel particularly concerned as he is pulled from the driver’s seat and is moving through the air, weightless. At least he won’t have to run over anything else wearing his face.

There are metal hands rising above the surface of the river.

Prompto sits up and breathes.

“Hey,” a hand pats Prompto’s shoulder and he looks down to see Gladio looking up with eyes bleary with sleep. “You good?”

Prompto forces a smile and whispers his reply. “Of course, buddy. Always am! Go back to sleep.”

Gladio takes a moment before nodding and turning back over in his sleeping bag. Ignis and Noct are thankfully sound asleep. Prompto drops his head into his hands for a moment.

Prompto’s dreams have never been particularly logical, but that doesn’t mean they don’t bother him. His rational brain can say they’re stupid all it wants, but his stupid lizard brain will likely replay the thought of running himself over or driving himself off a cliff for the next few weeks every time he closes his eyes.

“This is stupid,” Prompto mutters into his palms. He taps himself on the cheeks twice before resolutely laying back down and trying to go back to sleep out of spite.

Several months later, Prompto is hit with an odd sense that he’s done it all before as his snowmobile flies over the edge of a cliff. 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Twitter [@compromisedunit](https://mobile.twitter.com/compromisedunit)!


End file.
